Dont get me wrong, I TOTALLY admire mothers that work or go to school or do BOTH. Education is definitely important and in the long run itll benefit you and your child. And as far as working, bills need to be paid, babies are expensive so u gotta do what u gotta do. I understand that and i have alot of respect for mothers that can do that. But for me, i find it so hard to do neither because i know that he’s not going to be a baby forever and this is my first child , and who knows if i’ll ever have another one so i dont wanna look back one day and regret not spending enough time with him as i wish i had.
any mothers here feel the same way? especially the young mothers that still have school to think about?
I wanted to go cloth before my son was born, but I let my mother push me into disposables. She had her babies in the early 70′s before disposables and when cloth were a lot of work… the liners, the folding, the pins… things you don’t HAVE to do now in days. I couldn’t really complain at the time since they buy all his diapers (my parents way of feeling they are helping out since they live over 900 miles away from us). However, in Kansas City, we have a trash collection system that’s really odd. The city will pick up two bags of trash free of charge, anything over that you have to buy these little stickers to put on the bags or they slap a big old VIOLATION sticker on your bags (they’ll take two, leave the rest). I never had to worry before. We only generated about two bags of garbage a week (if not less) until after munchkin came along along then it doubled plus some! Which all that made me go all earth conscious and start worrying over what I was doing to the environment. I started looking into cloth again. However, they don’t sell those in any of the stores around here.
I did pick up something called a ‘hybrid diaper’ call gDiapers which I’m really happy with, problem is they’re expensive. Basically its a cotton outer pant like cloth, a breathable plastic inner liner that snaps into the outer one and an environmentally friendly insert that’s disposable. So they work much like cloth diapers . I got my parents on board with them, however I can’t go totally over to the gDiapers because of the cost. I can, though, from reading what other mothers have suggested with the gDiapers, use a cloth prefold or insert in the liners (just use that instead of the disposable insert).
So basically… any one have any suggestions as to what cloth diapers they prefer? I know it means more laundry, but I do laundry so much anyway it doesn’t matter (the liners on the g Diapers have to be washed occasionally anyway, though not often, I never get leaks and the plastic liner only needs washed when he poops because the insert works well to hold in the pee). I know that you need to change more often with cloth, but same with gDiapers, they don’t hold the same amount as disposables. I’m just tired of chasing after the dog running off with a dirty disposable (she eats them… GROSS! And so bad for her!) and though using the gDiapers a couple times a day has reduced my trash out put considerable (the liners are much smaller than a whole disposable, they can be flushed or composted, or thrown out). I’m pretty crazy about changing him often anyhow. If I have any thoughts the diaper may even be a little wet, I change him.
I know, long post, but munchkin is a sleep on my arm which is now trapped on the keyboard, I figured I might as well put my trapped position to good use :p
well im going to florida, tampa bay, an to bucsh gardens first time ever visiting florida, we got a condo on the beach im so excited, whats your plans
Have I gotten myself into trouble =) and any advice on things I should do before baby #2 is born, what should I expect, and how do I prepare my now 14months hip huggin daughter.
My DH’s Mother is probably one of the only people on earth I cannot understand. I have always been a person who can see both sides to a story but this woman… I can feel no empathy towards. It is always about her but not in the way that she’s egotistical or a b****, she’s not overbearing or over-reaching her bounds… the best way I can explain is that my husband said that on the day of 9/11 she called not because of the massive emotional turmoil that was sweeping the US but because she was upset someone didn’t call her. And after saying, "Have you seen the news?!" She went on to exclaim that of course she has and whine because no one was listening to her problem.
She is a constant emotional roller coaster. You cannot, repeating CANNOT, explain to this woman something she is doing wrong because it’s almost as if she’s completely mute to anything and if she does grasp it she will use it against everyone for the rest of their lives about how you hate her and think she’s an awful person, etc. I could go on forever and ever and ever…
After we had the baby it was like a sigh of relief to me, she seemed genuinely happy and loved being gramma. I never had a concern outside of him staying at her house when he got older because she’d just put him in a playpen and leave him there, but he was a baby and she was gramma and I was content. I even said to my DH about how well she was doing and he said that he’s not going to fall for it because eventually she’d just go back down the coaster.
She had babysat once before our first night out of the house when he was 4 1/2 months and although he cried at first he went to sleep and was fine the next day but her boyfriend was there and my son was there, so she had help with him. Well thinking it didn’t go so bad we asked if she would come out so we could go see a movie and that he does really well in the afternoon and she shouldn’t have a problem. Well we left and he was just fine but when we came back a little over a hour and a half later we found her crying on the floor over his bouncer while he was asleep in it! Which obviously set off a million red flags.
My son was 5mo old, I put a bottle in the fridge and since it was near lunch I showed her some cans of food and said if he was really hungry (since it was not bottle time) he could have a little bit of food. A LITTLE bit. When I looked in the fridge one WHOLE can and a half of another one were gone and the bottle! She told my DH that he kept crying in the bouncer so she kept feeding him until he passed out! On top of that she said she didn’t know why he kept crying and was asking him why he wouldn’t stop crying which is why she started and I’m thinking… he’s 5mo old he can’t explain to you why he’s crying!! Gah. I find out most of this though after she left and my DH told me and once our son woke up he cried and cried for hours because his stomach hurt and kept throwing up. I felt so awful.
My DH, like I said, is used to this. She isn’t the "Mom" type of person and mainly had children to have the picture family. It was never what was the matter with the baby but what was SHE doing wrong and he remembers many times when he’d cry she’d just go off crying by herself, her whole life revolved around her. But she was so good to him when we were around it wasn’t something we expected especially only leaving for less than two hours. How hard is it to play with him? To give him a toy or walk him around or let him bounce in his jumper horse?? /sigh To be honest I wouldn’t be surprised if she never even took him out of his bouncer.
So Sunday we go over there for Easter and she’s already asked us when she can see him again and also that she can watch him again if we want to get out. This summer we are going on a second Honeymoon since we didn’t get a first and my parents are watching him but how do I say no, we don’t want you to babysit him and no he will not be staying at your house when we go on vacation? She’ll wind up going on some crazy escapade, texting us about how awful we make her feel, or who knows she could go into the wanting to commit suicide thing she used again my DH long ago when she wanted him around. Or god forbid mailing everyone in the family about how awful we are which she did to her sister just after her sister’s husband died just because she wasn’t getting the sympathy.
I really don’t know how to approach the subject, I keep trying to think of ways, with any normal rational human being I could explain the whys and how it effects us and the child. But it’s like she has some block to common sense, how do you talk to someone like that?
Sorry so long. =/
